Carolyn Ellis Lipscomb was born April 25, 1929, in Pine Apple, Alabama. Her father, a Methodist minister, died when she was four and her mother moved the family to Auburn where they became actively involved in the Methodist Church there. After completing high school, Lipscomb attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute (Auburn University) and graduated with a math education degree in 1949. After teaching for several years, she married Andrew D. "Lan" Lipscomb in 1955. She stayed busy raising their four children and assisting with her husband's pharmacy business. Shortly after his retirement in 1988, Lan Lipscomb became ill and died in 1993. Carolyn Lipscomb remained actively involved in the community. Among other pursuits, she wrote a history of the Auburn United Methodist Church where she was a lifelong member, and served on the board of the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art. Lipscomb died on January 18, 2013, in Auburn.